They Held Up

Thankfully, I was wrong. The NOLA levees were overtopped and spilled some floodwaters into town, but they held up.

Hurricane Gustav slammed into the heart of Louisiana's fishing and oil industry with 110 mph winds Monday, delivering only a glancing blow to New Orleans that raised hopes the city would escape the kind of catastrophic flooding brought by Katrina three years ago.

That did not mean the state survived the storm without damage. A levee in the southeast part of the state was on the verge of collapse, and officials scrambled to fortify it. Roofs were torn from homes, trees toppled and roads flooded. More than 1 million homes were without power.

It's still billions in damage, but it could have been far worse. Thankfully it was not. It helped that Gustav was down to a strong Category 2 when it hit and not a 4 or 5, but it seems the worst is over.

It doesn't change the fact that there's still plenty of rebuilding still left to do from Katrina, and there will be plenty more to do now.

Who Picked Palin? Part 2

I said yesterday that the important question was not why Sarah palin was picked, but who in McSame's camp picked her. McClatchy News has picked up an Anchorage Daily News article that explains just who picked Sarah Palin. Hint: it still wasn't John McSame.

Last Sunday, Governor Palin and John McCain had a conversation over the phone. Governor Palin was at the Alaska State Fair, and John McCain was at his home at Phoenix. Previously, Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, had also been in regular contact with the Governor as part of the on-going selection process.

This past week, Governor Palin arrived with Kris Perry in Flagstaff, Arizona, on Wednesday evening. Upon arrival, Governor Palin and her longtime aide Kris Perry met with Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter of the McCain campaign at Mr. Bob Delgado’s home in Flagstaff. Mr. Delgado is the CEO of the Hensley corporation, which is Mrs. Cindy McCain's family business.

On Thursday morning, Governor Palin and staff were joined by Mrs. Cindy McCain and later joined by John McCain at the McCain family home in Sedona, Arizona. At approximately 11:00 a.m. Thursday August 28, 2008, John McCain formally invited Governor Sarah Palin to join the Republican ticket as the vice presidential nominee on the deck of the McCain family home.

The people behind the selection, and vetting of Palin, were McSame's campaign manager and deputy manager and the CEO of Cindy McSame's business. John McSame? Nowhere near that meeting. The green light was given by Schmidt and Salter, not McSame. That seems like McSame was too busy to meet with her until Thursday morning. In other words, John McSame gave Sarah Palin a phone interview for the job of Vice President of the United States, and then passed it off to his campaign guys. Only after the meeting with them did McSame meet with Palin, for the first time since February.

In other words, this is all staged. Schmidt got his orders, he gave them to McSame and green lighted her for him.

McSame's not in charge of his own campaign.

Not only that, but the people that vetted her beforehand didn't actually vet her, as Josh Marshall points out at TPM:

Earlier I noted Andrea Mitchell's reference to reports that the McCain camp had just sent a team of GOP lawyers up to Alaska to do what I guess you'd call a post-vetting of Sarah Palin. Now George Stephanopoulos appears to have more. George says the McCainers are sending a "rapid response team of about ten operatives that includes lawyers" to do the aforementioned deeper vet. A lot of attention is being given to Gov. Palin's daughter's situation. The much bigger deal is the expanding trooper-gate investigation, the fact that Palin lied in her Friday speech about her purported opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere, her apparent former membership in the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, and more. Individually, you can come to your own judgment about how consequential these stories are. What they show pretty clearly now -- in addition to the news that the McCain campaign is only now sending in a vetting team -- is that John McCain didn't do any serious vetting of Palin before he invited her to join his ticket and, he hopes, become Vice President of the United States.

Fundamentally, of course, this is about John McCain. And the real issue here is what this slapdash decision says about his judgment.

In other words, Sarah Palin was a long-shot gamble and McSame is a long-shot gambler who decided that it didn't matter who his VP was, the rest of the field couldn't get him in the White House. His people went for it and hoped it worked out later. We don't know what's hiding in her past, and what we do know about her past doesn't fill me with confidence about McSame's decision making process or Sarah Palin's, for that matter.

She's turning into a disaster.

Oh, Baby...

Sarah Palin's daughter 17-year old daughter Bristol is indeed pregnant. She's keeping the kid and marrying the father. No judgment here, a baby is a beautiful thing. A 17-year old getting pregnant isn't exactly new to the universe. All the best wishes to Bristol as she becomes a mother.

But I can tell you two things however:

1. The Dems better be damned careful around how they respond to this one (if at all), and
2. The theory that the McSame camp didn't bother to vet Sarah Palin at all looms ever larger as more evidence piles up on that side of the ledger.
   

You'd think this would be something the McSame folks would want to know ahead of time.

UPDATE: The Obama camp has made it crystal clear that Bristol Palin and the rest of Sarah Palin's family is 100% off-limits. Good for him. Any attack on Palin at all along these lines and the GOP will play the misogyny card.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

What would the Republicans do if Barack Obama took time off from campaigning to head down to Mississippi and talk about the federal response to Gustav? The Village would crucify him. We'd hear how Obama was being nothing more than presumptuous, arrogant, just another uppity Negro who was above his station. "He's not in the White House yet! How dare he!"

But John McSame is a war hero who is stepping above politics now to help people in the path of Gustav, and isn't using this to his political advantage. Why are we seeing more of John McSame than President Bush right now?

You'd almost think McSame was President right now.

UPDATE: McSame certainly seems like he's the GOP's point man on Gustav. Let McSame own the failure.

Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Over at Martini Revolution, Alex asks:

Are they really going to say “fuck my daughters right to choose, and let the schools teach her than man and dinosaurs co-existed” and pull the lever for John McCain? A man who has said he’s willing to keep their sons in Iraq for 100 years, if he doesn’t decide to expend their lives in an invasion of Iran first?

The GOP sure as hell thinks women are particularly stupid, yes.

Paper Ma-Shame

Here's a heartwarming f'ckin story from Pam at House Blend:

Will the levees hold? Recently there was an investigation that uncovered the fact that newspaper was being used by a contractor hired by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to shore up levees in St. Bernard Parish.

And when he confronted the contractor, the contractor blamed Washington for the substandard work. "He basically told me when Congress sent down the money, it would be repaired the proper way."

But during a recent trip to the area, two years later, it was apparent that didn't happen. Much of the newspaper had deteriorated or been eaten by bugs, but some still remained. In fact WWL cameras even captured the date May 21, 2006, on a page of the Parade magazine from the Times-Picayune...The Corps also says it's satisfied with the quality of work done by its contractor. When asked by WWL if there was any shoddy work involved, Wagner said, "I don't think so at all."

I have little confidence that the levees will hold.

That makes two of us. Should these things fail again today, remember who is responsible for this.

Hint: It's not the Democrats.

Watching Gustav

Watching the coverage of Gustav this morning on MSNBC. I can't believe they're talking to Mike "Heck of a job Brownie" Brown right now as some sort of expert on the situation. Then again, Brown is a huge reminder and symbol of just how broken the Bushies are.

MSNBC is now saying FEMA expects that some of the levees in the south and west may fail again. Once again this is shaping up to be a complete disaster. Thousands are left in the city. Anyone left in there is on their own. The government's not there to protect those who can't get out. Let em die, our government says. Gustav makes landfall shortly.

We'll see. Remember this Labor Day, while you get a day off (some of us) as a reward for being the most productive workers on Earth, and this is how the government treats you in return: you're on your own.

Remember, the GOP thinks this storm will be good for them.

“You don’t wish for it, but it shows McCain dealing with a surprise — a big event that has consequences on people,” a convention planner said. “It’s redemption for the Republican Party on the competence issue. The convention ends up being about John McCain showing the best way to serve a cause greater than yourself.”

Remember in November.

StupidiNews, Labor Day Edition

• Gustav is being an ungracious guest all over Louisiana this morning as a strong category 3 storm.
• US officials are beginning to think Iraqi PM al-Maliki is getting too big for his britches.
• Gustav is rolling the RNC back as major GOP luminaries are skipping St. Paul, including McSame.
• Baghdad may be a better place for bond investments than Cleveland.
• A new study from Rutgers for Labor Day finds the number of Americans out of work or underemployed is over ten percent.

Zandar's Thought Of the Day

Saved on the PCs of most of America's political pundits is a partially started column for the week of Wednesday, November 5th, 2008. It reads:

But let's look at the judgment of the man who lost this election, for both sides tried mightily to do so. "How could he have lost?" is not the question, but "How could he have possibly won?" It's simple, really, for it goes back to that fateful day in August. In hindsight, the (failure to select/selection of) (Hillary Clinton/Sarah Palin) was the worst Vice-Presidential decision since Eagleton, if not the worst in modern American history. It not only lost the election for him, but may have very well driven a stake into the heart of his party and put them in the wilderness for a generation, the (Democrats/Republicans) are now mired in a morass of recriminations and have already picked sides against each other for 2012, leaving them hopelessly fractured for a very long time...that's how bad the damage from that one monumentally horrific decision was.

See, I can do this Village job.

Who Picked Palin?

People are beginning to ask the right questions about Sarah Palin...not why she was picked, but who picked her. Steve Clemons has more at the Washington Note:

Rumors are swirling that Tim Pawlenty is furious - that he was on the edge of McCain announcing he was the GOP VP running mate - but that at the last moment, that course was rejected in favor of a person McCain met once, six months ago, and did not interview again.

Huckabee is not pleased that he wasn't even vetted - and he's letting his followers know.

But it may be that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wasn't vetted either!

Tristan Snell at Open Left discusses what this means for the Dems and their plan of attack:

This should be our refrain, our only talking point about the selection:

Who chose Palin?

Well, it certainly wasn't John McCain.

McCain only met Palin once, six months ago. Unlike every other major party VP nominee in recent memory, Palin did not meet McCain for a final interview before her selection. A few weeks ago, she wasn't in the running at all. The scandals and unorthodoxies involving Palin -- she flip-flopped on the Bridge to Nowhere and even raised sales taxes on her small town to pay for an overpriced boondoggle -- show that the McCain campaign didn't vet her. The McCains and Palins looked visibly awkward together, not even speaking as they went their separate ways on a brief shopping trip in Ohio yesterday. McCain is on record as saying he wanted a running mate with whom he had a strong personal relationship -- and who was ready to be president.

This was clearly not his pick. So again: Who chose Palin?

Was it Dick Cheney? Or Karl Rove? Or maybe James Dobson?

That's a damn good question. What it means is John McSame is not only not a maverick and now fully under control of the fundie wingnut arm of the GOP, but that he no longer has control over his own Presidential campaign. Tim Pawlenty canceled all his appearances for Friday late on Thursday, with the understanding from the press that he was McSame's choice. All of a sudden, first thing Friday morning, Pawlenty is on the radio saying he's "not going to be in Dayton" and that he was now not the pick.

Something happened on Thursday the 28th. That something is somebody in the GOP gave marching orders to McSame, gave orders to somebody running for President, and said "You will take Sarah Palin." If John McSame is going to be President, we need to know who is giving him orders. John McSame isn't ready to be President if he can't stop the extremist neo-con arm of his own party from making his Presidential decisions for him...period. He's no maverick, he's one of them and always has been.

This is going to backfire miserably for the GOP. It will get out who made the choice. And then McSame's run at the White House is over. As the Open Left article concludes:

The new Time piece on McCain already suggests that he's being increasingly controlled by his advisors and consultants, no longer allowed to speak off the cuff or be open with reporters -- leading him to be prickly and gruff. So raising these questions could lead to a wave of media stories on McCain's weakness and frustration at being controlled. Similar stories about Kerry and Gore were devastating to their images and thus to their campaigns.

The Palin pick won McCain some initial good press, and it has raised some concerns among progressives. But it has revealed a huge weakness in McCain's candidacy -- and if we take advantage of it, intelligently, it could be a tremendous gift.

Karl Rove is running for a third term. It's time to attack McSame on that point.

The Politicization of Gustav Begins

Bush and Cheney are skipping the Republican convention due to Gustav. They have to appear Presidential.

This has nothing to do with the fact their combined approval ratings are under 50%, I assure you.

The Village Is Pissed At Palin

As I've mentioned before, the key to Palin is getting the Village women to like her.

They do not. They despise her. First up, Gail Collins from the NY Times:

However, I do feel kind of ticked off at the assumptions that the Republicans seem to be making about female voters. It’s a tad reminiscent of the Dan Quayle selection, when the first George Bush’s advisers decided they could close the gender gap with a cute running mate.

The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong. When the sexes have parted company in modern elections, it’s generally been because women are more likely to be Democrats, and more concerned about protecting the social safety net. “The gender gap traditionally has been determined by party preference, not by the gender of the candidate,” said Ruth Mandel of the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post:

The spin on McCain's choice of the Alaska governor is that it reinforces his maverick credentials. I see it the opposite way: It undermines them. McCain looks like any other calculating politician, willing to do whatever it takes to win.

The maverick argument is that Palin is an outsider -- the only one of four on the November ballot. "She's not from these parts and she's not from Washington," McCain said in Dayton, Ohio. Palin complements McCain's reformer credentials, having spoken out against corruption and earmarks in a state that has an oversize share of both. She is a young, fresh and, yes, female face. "A running mate who can best help me shake up Washington," McCain said.

But I can't believe that McCain truly thinks Palin is the best choice to be a heartbeat away -- especially in a White House that would be occupied by the oldest man ever to be elected to a first term in the office.

McCain runs the risk that Palin will turn out to be Dan Quayle with an up-do -- except with less experience. By the time he was selected as George H.W. Bush's running mate, Quayle had served in the House and Senate for a dozen years. Palin has been governor for less than two.

And of course MoDo the Red goes on a complete bender:

The guilty pleasure I miss most when I’m out slogging on the campaign trail is the chance to sprawl on the chaise and watch a vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick.

So imagine my delight, my absolute astonishment, when the hokey chick flick came out on the trail, a Cinderella story so preposterous it’s hard to believe it’s not premiering on Lifetime. Instead of going home and watching “Miss Congeniality” with Sandra Bullock, I get to stay here and watch “Miss Congeniality” with Sarah Palin.

Sheer heaven.

Palin is DOA, folks, she's Dan Quayle in a dress, and that's an insult to Dan Quayle...he at least was a sitting US Senator.

Sure McSame Vetted Her, Right?

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall does some investigative reporting (remember that, America?) and calls shenanigans on today's WaPo story that has the McSame camp insisting Sarah Palin's been vetted "extensively".

But leafing through articles out of Alaska, there's good reason to doubt these claims that Palin received an extensive vetting.

One bit of info from the Anchorage Daily News ...

Former House Speaker Gail Phillips, a Republican political leader who has clashed with Palin in the past, was shocked when she heard the news Friday morning with her husband, Walt.

"I said to Walt, 'This can't be happening, because his advance team didn't come to Alaska to check her out," Phillips said.

Phillips has been active in the Ted Stevens re-election steering committee and remains in close touch with Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other party leaders, and she said nobody had heard anything about McCain's people doing research on his prospective running mate.

"We're not a very big state. People I talk to would have heard something."

Perhaps she's just a hostile or isn't as plugged in as she thinks. But there's also this.

The big bogey for Palin is the ethics investigation into possible abuse of power in her firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. I can see possible reasons why the McCain camp would hesitate to make contact with Monegan. But with credible claims that she abused her office and subsequently lied about her actions, I would think the McCain camp would want to understand that case inside and out. But according to an article in today's ADN, Monegan says that no one from the McCain campaign ever contacted him about Palin.

Impulsive, rash, panicky, too quick, risky. That's been John McSame for his entire political career. Why should this be any different? That is the level of judgment he brings to the White House.

This is going to backfire in a huge manner. Sarah Palin will be pressured to turn down McSame's offer by a large part of the party. I hope she stays. She's not a disastrous candidate because she's a woman and the Democrats absolutely must avoid backhanded misogyny on dealing with Palin. She is a disatrous candidate because she is unqualified on the issues and is under investigation. Attack McSame's judgment for selecting her instead.

NOLA And America Are Tested Again

Gustav has weakened a bit to a strong Category 3 storm at 125 MPH, but he's expected to pick up steam over the next 24-36 hours back into Category 4 or even 5 status. NOLA is almost certainly in the storm's path now. Three years ago the worst hurricane to hit that part of the country in a hundred years came ashore and changed America forever when Katrina hit.

Gustav is expected to be worse. Already we're seeing the same problems with Katrina's evacuation...there are those who cannot leave the city. Should they stay behind, they will have even fewer options for help than under Katrina's assault.

The storm called up uneasy memories of the deadly 2005 hurricane season, particularly of Katrina. When Katrina hit, more than 1,800 people died in five states, 1,577 of them in Louisiana.

Unlike the situation during Katrina, there will be no "shelter of last resort," the city said. In 2005, the city's Louisiana Superdome housed thousands of New Orleanians who couldn't, or didn't, heed the mandatory evacuation order.

Nagin warned that all but a "skeleton crew" of city workers would be leaving the city and said local authorities could not promise help for those who choose to stay behind.

"This is very, very serious, and we need you to heed this warning," he said. "We really don't have the resources to rescue you after this."

The FEMA trailer towns will certainly be annihilated. Should the worst happen and the levees fail a second time, I don't think New Orleans will survive. It was already on life support. A second, even worse hurricane could kill the city.

And just like last time, the poor are unable to leave.

"It's the storm of the century," he said.

But Kennedy can't and others just won't leave. They are the few residents who did not make the tortoise crawl down Interstate 10 on Saturday.

"If I left, I'll probably lose my job," said Jeremiah O'Farrell, another dishwasher who is staying put. "I really don't have anywhere to go if I could leave. I could go home, but that doesn't seem like the thing to try. Too far, I guess."

These are the folks you're going to see on rooftops again...or their bodies are not going to be found for weeks until the water recedes.

Across town in the 9th Ward, a neighborhood decimated by Katrina, Sidney William climbs slowly out of his truck. He's 49 but moves like he's 20 years older.

"My legs hurt; my feet hurt a lot," he said. "It's not easy."

William wants desperately to leave his native New Orleans to avoid Gustav. He didn't leave for Katrina because he didn't have the money. He won't talk about what happened to him during that storm.

"I wish I had the money to go." Rejected for disability subsidies, he depends on his 23-year-old daughter, Gloria, to support the family.

"Lot of folks around here are gonna make do with what they have, and you won't hear a terrible amount of complaining," he said. "You can't just come in here and expect to hear people fussing about how they don't have nothing. People just be used to not having much, and so you don't even think too hard about it until someone starts asking you questions."

A neighbor, Victoria, says she has two Rottweilers who she's not willing to leave behind.

"Now, what do you think that would look like, me and my little car sitting there in traffic with two big old Rottweilers," she said, laughing.

Money is tight for her, too.

"Guess I'm just gonna wait. I just don't know. It's all stressful."

The city's underclass will suffer the most, and after Katrina there's a lot more underclass, driven under by three years of post-Katrina, "compassionate conservative" neglect. It was their fault for letting the hurricanes kill them. The government was free of all responsibility to its people for this, we're told by Republicans. Then the same government provided millions to the weathiest developers and corporations and ignored the most vulnerable. Three years of dragging their feet has left the city open to another disaster like Gustav. It's too expensive to make the levees safe against another Katrina, what are the odds of another Category 3+ hurricane hitting NOLA again anytime soon?

Now in less than 48 hours we'll see if the bill for that comes due. What is happening to NOLA is what the GOP has planned for all of America: you're on your own...we're helping the top 1%. Saving the lives of people trapped by Gustav and Katrina isn't cost-effective, but a six-year war in the middle east is vital to America's very existence.

Remember Katrina and Gustav this November. We've already failed part of the test. Now we'll see just how much it's going to cost us all.

Also at the Frog Pond

Unending War In The Police State Of America

Bush wants Congress to authorize an open-ended, permanent state of war.

Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision that has received almost no public attention, yet in many ways captures one of President Bush’s defining legacies: an affirmation that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda.

Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush’s advisers assert that many Americans may have forgotten that. So they want Congress to say so and “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”

The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism. Echoing a measure that Congress passed just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say.

Some lawmakers are concerned that the administration’s effort to declare anew a war footing is an 11th-hour maneuver to re-establish its broad interpretation of the president’s wartime powers, even in the face of challenges from the Supreme Court and Congress.

The proposal is also the latest step that the administration, in its waning months, has taken to make permanent important aspects of its “long war” against terrorism. From a new wiretapping law approved by Congress to a rewriting of intelligence procedures and F.B.I. investigative techniques, the administration is moving to institutionalize by law, regulation or order a wide variety of antiterrorism tactics.

“This seems like a final push by the administration before they go out the door,” said Suzanne Spaulding, a former lawyer for the Central Intelligence Agency and an expert on national security law. The cumulative effect of the actions, Ms. Spaulding said, is to “put the onus on the next administration” — particularly a Barack Obama administration — to justify undoing what Mr. Bush has done.

And Obama would be seen as weak on terrorism if he did so...and so would the already-proven spineless Dems in Congress. They would never un-authorize it. Besides, Obama's already said on multiple occasions that he wishes out of Iraq, only to focus on Afghanistan and possibly even Pakistan.

But the permanent state of war primarily would allow continuing abuses of power by Bush and his friends. These abuses would be permanently codified into law if McSame and Palin got control of the White House and even one more Supreme Court justice was installed along the lines of Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Roberts.

Bush's police state legacy must be dismantled by the next President, or it will become law for our children and possibly our grandchildren as well.

Explain this to your friends out there that tell you "Obama, McSame, it doesn't matter who I vote for." Don't believe me about the police state?

Look what the GOP is doing in the Twin Cities this weekend to keep the Republican National Convention free of dissent: raiding, arresting, and detaining suspected protesters who have yet to break any law, commit any crimes, or threaten anyone.

Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.

Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning -- one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided. Each of the raided houses is known by neighbors as a "hippie house," where 5-10 college-aged individuals live in a communal setting, and everyone we spoke with said that there had never been any problems of any kind in those houses, that they were filled with "peaceful kids" who are politically active but entirely unthreatening and friendly. Posted below is the video of the scene, including various interviews, which convey a very clear sense of what is actually going on here.

In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs. The 10 or so individuals in the house all said that though they found the experience very jarring, they still intended to protest against the GOP Convention, and several said that being subjected to raids of that sort made them more emboldened than ever to do so.

This is what the police state is doing already in this country. Give it four more years of McSame and Palin, and this will be the new face of "law enforcement" in your hometown.